Snowden: The arrest of Durov is an assault on the basic human rights
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There is the right way and the wrong way.
Wrong way: Telegram keeps records and refuses to cooperate. Telegram faces consequences.
Right way: Signal cooperates. They give two Unix timestamps. One for when the account was created and the date the account last connected to the Signal service. https://signal.org/bigbrother/cd-california-grand-jury/ See also: https://signal.org/bigbrother/
The protocol is public. Signal software is free and open-source. Its mobile clients, desktop client, and server are all published under the AGPL-3.0. Any modifications for the app binaries and protocols would be quickly noticed. Hackers and cybersecurity companies are not fools.
Would it though? The Signal server source repo was once not updated for almost a year until somebody noticed and called them out on it:
Signal doesn't support reproducible builds, does it?
I don't understand why Signal is not pursuing the reproducible builds. It looks suspicious. Verification of a binary takes a huge effort and can only be done by knowledgeable people. Case in point: nobody noticed or cared about the lack of undisclosed binary updates of Signal without released sources.
EU has been doing a lot of really bad stuff regarding the freedom of private communication recently (last few years), but they still manage to complain about others.
Iran apprehending an American official crosses from criminality and law into the anarchy of geopolitics.
For example, the fact that we have nukes is probably one among many considerations a foreign power might weigh when thinking about kidnapping the President.
You're proposing that France shouldn't be able to arrest the leader of a cartel or mafia if they file paperwork in Delaware?
Governments are funny like that. If I go to Germany and kill a man in the street, I might not end up under arrest if I go to, say, Russia, but if I go back to my home country? Yeah, they'd arrest me for a crime committed elsewhere in someone else's jurisdiction we're allied with.
Edit: By "operates" I mean its services are accessible from France. If an entity cannot or will not comply with EU laws (e.g. GDPR) they can block clients from the EU. I regularly come across such websites with geoblocks (a few times a year).
Also the website is in French and the illegal messages are likely in French. This is far enough.
Now add on top, that the CEO is French on French soil...
You can access substantially all internet services from France, and from any other country that doesn't explicitly block them, and from most of the ones that do via satellite internet or VPNs etc.
> you can create an account from a French number.
You can have a French number and not be in France. Also, this is the location of the user, not the company. This is basically the same reasoning as the internet; the phone network is global and anybody can call anybody. That doesn't mean that every service provider is in every country.
> Also the website is in French and the illegal messages are likely in French.
There are millions of people who speak French who aren't in France.
> Now add on top, that the CEO is French on French soil...
But we're talking about where the company is operating. Should France arrest the French CEO of a US company that does something in the US which is legal in the US but not in France?
It's under the same principle that Megaupload was shut down by the US, despite the company was not connected to the US or operating from the US.
This is why some websites block visitors from France (e.g. newspapers not willing to bother with GDPR for example) or that some sites block visitors, registrations and payments from the US (e.g. investment websites).
Here Telegram refuses to respect French law. Whether they are ethically right or not, it's one debate, but in the meantime, the detectives want to gather elements.
It's the standard way that police talks there. They don't send lawyers. Instead they put you in custody for interrogation.
A bit rude, I recognize it, though relatively common. Even the French CEO of Uber was sent in custody there.
The internet is global. Any website can by default be accessed from any country. Are you proposing that anyone with a website is subject to the laws of every country? Notice that this is impossible to do; the laws of different countries will require mutually exclusive things.
> It's under the same principle that Megaupload was shut down by the US, despite the company was not connected to the US or operating from the US.
You're citing an extremely controversial practice to justify the same. The question is what should be the case and is reasonable, not what some country has managed to get away with through some questionable shenanigans or might makes right.
> At least to show: "we tried our best".
This is just a fig leaf. IP location services are notoriously unreliable and trivially bypassed. Anybody in any location can choose the IP address they make a request from. Also, fragmenting the internet in this way is poison and should be discouraged as a matter of policy. You're effectively asking websites to block foreign countries by default because they don't have the resources to hire a lawyer for every country that exists to see how to comply with their laws.
And if other countries like USA have conflicting laws like Patriot Act then companies can be even forced to divest from EU or split their businesses so that USA branch can not enforce USA spy laws in EU. Google Privacy Shield.
Ships that have sailed can still be sunk.
> And if other countries like USA have conflicting laws like Patriot Act then companies can be even forced to divest from EU or split their businesses so that USA branch can not enforce USA spy laws in EU.
How is this supposed to apply to a small business with one employee?
Durov is a French citizen. He was arrested in France. This isn't a Kim Dotcom situation.
Great argument. :)
Also, Telegram is accused in other things, like importing uncertified cryptographic tools. If you go to Gtihub, there are large deposits of uncertified cryptographic tools. Why ssh or openssl developers are not arrested? I am sure they do not have a proper certificate.
As I guess, this is a typical case when the law enforcement bends the vaguely written laws. A law saying something like "it is illegal to assist commiting a crime" is a typical example of such vague law: until there is a court decision you cannot even know if some event was legal or illegal. And "assist" is also a very vague term.
No. But after refusing it, I sure as hell wouldn't go there.
Don't even go close:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/23/belarus-divert...
Also, don't pretend to "go hiking" along the Iranian border...
Yes, France has a stronger rule of law than China, Russia or North Korea [1].
That doesn't mean their laws are inherently better. But their legal system is objectively superior when it comes to something like weighing a warrant.
[1] https://elsevier-ssrn-document-store-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/1...
There were similar questions with Tor exit nodes:
https://lafibre.info/attaques/hebergement-dun-noeud-de-sorti...
It's legal, but you will get police interrogation.
If we cannot reach this (imho very low) bar of understanding, we have no chance of a fruitful conversation. If we would continue pretending that this is an earnest stance, we would normalize, justify and enhance autocracies, which we don´t need here.
One might be better of to try furthering these kind of view points in China or any other dictatorship of choice.
Consider a law banning the eating of meat, vs one dictating that meat should be eaten at least once per week. One of these laws must be enacted. Which one is superior? Obviously (I think), the vegetarian would consider the former superior, and the meat lover the latter.
But we can also look further into environmental differences. Given an hypothetical area where animals are abundant and plants aren't, the latter law would generally be considered superior. In an area where this is reversed, the former would be. Ultimately these will be subjective values based on the actual situation.
And there's always the power dynamic that "trumps" situations. A vegetarian gaining the power to make laws in a vegetatively poor area will obviously not - necessarily - lead to the latter law being enacted. Even if the majority of the population is made of meat lovers. And in a world dominated by vegetarians, the many will applaud and say the ban on meat is the "right thing" for those in said vegetatively poor area.
All that is just an elaborate illustration to say that yes, equality, personal sovereignty, etc really are - subjective - human constructs. And any laws surrounding them will be considered superior/inferior based on how these constructs are valued.
Probably no but I also would expect to face consequences if I go to the country whom court order I choose not to fulfill.
It's the same thing with the USA in the crypto community, you either don't sell US citizens unregulated securities or you sell and avoid USA or any country that might extradite you to USA.
I remember the days when the internet was the wild west, laws wouldn't apply and the cops lacked the tools to catch anyone or enforce anything. Those days are long gone, the rule of the thumb is that countries now have rules and tool for this stuff and if you break them better never ever visit these countries.
When I read that at first, I thought crypto was short for cryptography, and you were referring to the crypto wars, back when most cryptography was classified as arms (weapons) in the US and it was illegal to distribute cryptographic software in many cases.
One of my instructors in college attended a US college, but during his PhD would drive to Canada to write all the code, so that the code could be legally distributed. If it was written in the US, it couldn't be.
Him being charged is as simple and standard as an administrator being shut down and it's owner charged for propagating illegal content. As standard as a Tor drug site being shutdown and it's owner charged. Worse, Durov was involved with CSAM material and did nothing about it. For this, he is immoral and in my opinion, a disgusting human being.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...
https://www.threads.net/@cyndiborowski/post/C_JSEuByAVQ?xmt=...
Source?
"Telegram is a key component of the ecosystem of individuals trading and selling child sexual abuse materials, and is the only major platform to implicitly allow the exchange of CSAM on private channels, many of which are not end-to-end encrypted.” Stamos is now chief information security officer at cybersecurity company SentinelOne.
A June report from the Stanford Internet Observatory found that Telegram was the only major platform not to forbid illegal material in private channels and chats. “Telegram has also been observed by SIO as failing to perform even basic content enforcement on public channels, with instances of known CSAM being detected and reported by our ingest systems,” the report said.
Jean-Michel Bernigaud, secretary general of Ofmin, a French police agency focused on preventing violence against minors, said in a LinkedIn post Monday that Durov’s arrest was related to the app’s inability to deal with offensive content against minors. “At the heart of the case is the absence of moderation and cooperation on the part of the platform,” Bernigaud said, “especially in the fight against child sex crimes.”
> Worse, Durov was involved with CSAM material and did nothing about it. For this, he is immoral and in my opinion, a disgusting human being.
You have no idea who Durov is. You have a handful of claims by French authorities without evidence and you immediately jump to loathing this person and reviling them as a "disgusting human being"? Shame on you.
I trust the French government and several global monitoring CSAM agencies more than I trust a random Twitter or HN user.
This is a quote from the beginning of the report:
> Large networks of accounts, putatively operated by minors, are openly advertising self-generated child sexual abuse material (SG-CSAM) for sale.
(by the way this might be because it is very difficult to find a legitimate job if you are a teenager without any natural skills and talents. Why doesn't government do anything to change this? Where are teenagers from poor families supposed to get money from?)
> Instagram is currently the most important platform for these networks, with features that help connect buyers and sellers
> Instagram’s recommendation algorithms are a key reason for the platform’s effectiveness in advertising SG-CSAM.
> Twitter had an apparent regression allowing CSAM to be posted to public profiles, despite hashes of these images being available to platforms and researchers.
Can we expect to see Musk and Zuckerberg in the same jail with Durov then? Or justice doesn't apply to everyone equally?
Note also that the report gives following recommendations in the conclusion:
> When an account is identified as selling SG-CSAM, disabling the account should be accompanied by messaging to the seller to attempt to discourage recidivism. This messaging might include:
> The fact that this content is widely illegal and can result in prosecution; being a minor does not prevent legal consequences
So basically what reports suggests is not to do something to help teenagers from poor families to find a legitimate job, but to threaten them with a jail term for selling their own photos. So American!
> A June report from the Stanford Internet Observatory found that Telegram was the only major platform not to forbid illegal material in private channels and chats. “
If you read the report, this means that Telegram's ToS do not explicitly forbid to post illegal material in private groups. But do you need to forbid explicitly what is already forbidden by the law?
The report contains further claim though:
> It further states that “All Telegram chats and group chats are private amongst their participants. We do not process any requests related to them
This is alarming but this not exactly how it works because you can actually report messages even in one-to-one private chats, for example, if you get spam from a new contact, and they can get blocked. I never got illegal material from contacts (only spam) so I don't have experience reporting it.
> Telegram has also been observed by SIO as failing to perform even basic content enforcement on public channels, with instances of known CSAM being detected and reported by our ingest systems
If you read further, by "failing to perform basic content enforcement" they mean that Telegram doesn't check posted images again CSAM database, and imply that Telegram is obliged to do this. However, I am not sure if the law requires this.
Now I want to comment on other vaguely written claims.
> Telegram is a key component of the ecosystem of individuals trading and selling child sexual abuse materials,
What makes Telegram a "key component"? Did Durov designed Telegram and added features with primary intent to make selling illegal materials easier? This sounds implausible.
> At the heart of the case is the absence of moderation
Does he mean a lack of pre-moderation (reviewing every message before posting) or lack of response to reports? There definitely is moderation in Telegram, so the "absense of moderation" doesn't ring true to me. If would be good if they presented more details instead of vague words.
> absence of ... cooperation
"cooperation" is a vague word. Maybe France just wants to be able to read all messages in private groups under an excuse of fighting crime? This would be a completely different story then.
[1] https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:jd797tp7663/20230606-...
"the app had gained a reputation for ignoring advocacy groups fighting child exploitation.
Three of those groups, the U.S.-based National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and the U.K.-based Internet Watch Foundation, all told NBC News that their outreach to Telegram about child sexual abuse material, often shorthanded as CSAM, on the platform has largely been ignored."
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/telegram-ceo-pavel-dur...
The article mentions a 2023 report of SIO [1] on minors trying to earn money by selling their own photos online; the report mentions Telegram, but notes that Instagram and Twitter are worse:
> Instagram is currently the most important platform for these networks, with features that help connect buyers and sellers
> Instagram’s recommendation algorithms are a key reason for the platform’s effectiveness in advertising SG-CSAM.
> Twitter had an apparent regression allowing CSAM to be posted to public profiles, despite hashes of these images being available to platforms and researchers
Yet, for some strange reason Musk and Zuckerberg are not under investigation.
Note, that the report also doesn't give any recommendations to govts to help minors to earn money they need the legal way to solve the root issue.
[1] https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:jd797tp7663/20230606-...
Complicity - Administration of an online platform to allow an illegal transaction in an organised band,
- Refusal to communicate, at the request of the authorised authorities, the information or documents necessary for the realisation and exploitation of interceptions authorised by law,
- Complicity - Detention of the image of a minor of a child-pornographic nature,
- Complicity - Dissemination, offer or making available in an organised tape of images of a minor of a pornographic nature,
- Complicity - Acquisition, transport, holding, offer or disposal of narcotic products,
- Complicity - Offer, assignment or making available without legitimate reason of equipment, an instrument, a program or data designed or adapted for the attack and access to the operation of an automated data processing system,
- Complicity - Organised gang scam,
- Association of criminals with a view to committing a crime or offence punishable by 5 years of imprisonment at least,
- Money laundering of crimes or offences in organised gangs,
- Provision of cryptology services to ensure confidentiality functions without a declaration of conformity,
- Provision of a cryptological means not exclusively ensuring authentication or integrity control functions without prior declaration,
- Import of a cryptology means that does not exclusively perform authentication or integrity control functions without prior declaration.
You'd have to show that he knew about specific instances and declined to intervene.
I'm not saying that's unlikely. But I haven't seen it shown, and I suspect part of what the French police are trying to get is that evidence of wilful inaction versus gross negligence.
Every social network or file sharing site that I've been aware of has a Trust and Safety department for just this reason even X. The executives don't want to go to jail.
Well, that's quite the assumption. The commenter you've replied to said nothing like this. And yet this is your first conclusion?? Is this how you operate in real life, at your job?
Telegram does moderate for CSAM. The claim that it does not is completely unsubstantiated. You can find CSAM across Meta's products. Does that mean they do not check for CSAM? No.
"the app had gained a reputation for ignoring advocacy groups fighting child exploitation.
Three of those groups, the U.S.-based National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and the U.K.-based Internet Watch Foundation, all told NBC News that their outreach to Telegram about child sexual abuse material, often shorthanded as CSAM, on the platform has largely been ignored."
Signal responding to a subpoena with, in essence, a fuck you is authoritarian?
Given the accusations against Telegram, many of the points apply to Signal equally, including importing uncertified cryptographic tools.
The DoJ has its own Telegram channel [1].
The comparison was only made to justify arresting Telegram's CEO. Which, yes, is authoritarian.
If Signal had blown off the court completely, yes, that would have resulted in arrest warrants. That's at least what France alleges Durov did in the warrant.
So we should be asking if this makes sense. If the government can snatch the data from third party services without a warrant then the people interesting to them will use the ones that don't store it, and then the government can't get the data with only a subpoena anyway. They may not even be able to get it with a warrant. But it also means that people can't have any features that require a trusted third party if they're concerned about legal liability from e.g. prosecutors taking things out of context, which should be everybody because they do that all the time.
But Signal did get it right too, this is basically malicious compliance. But making a state make a fuss is another.
Edit: PDF for the arrest warrant so that it's in context for the comments:
https://www.tribunal-de-paris.justice.fr/sites/default/files...
France has fairly extreme data retention requirements [1].
[1] https://www.conseil-etat.fr/en/news/connection-data-the-coun...
Seeing stuff like in the past few decades has me viewing criminals and police more and more alike.
At least the criminals don't hide behind a facade of public service/good.
I do highly commend Snowdon for what he has done in the past, but his (though highly understandable) silence regarding Ukraine puts him on my shitlist. Very low down on it, but on it all the same.
Do you even understand that he is forced to stay in Russia, and would prefer not to have an accidental fall from a window?
There is also a big difference between doing what e.g. Signal does, which is respond with everything they have, i.e. nothing, and (a) refusing to provide data you have or (b) blowing the warrant off.
telegram purports to be "encrypted".
There has been no audit of that. The servers live in a country with questionable legal standing for digital citizens.
What the French say they are arresting him for, and what they actually know might not be the same. Given telegrams position the cyber criminal world, and its place in Russia and eastern Europe I would not be surprised if there is a litany of reasons we aren't hearing about.
Yes. We're dealing with French law on French soil in respect of a dual national.
We literally have zero official documents from the arrest. (EDIT: We got one!) This could be an elaborate scheme to route out an FSB plot. Or it could be as simple as he has a bunch of drugs on his jet.
In summary, it's a fundamentally complicated situation into which we have imperfect information. Coming to a strong conclusion, at this point, is an expression of faith. Not reason.
relevant:
> So it appears that Pavel Durov has been using cryptography without a license.
Direct link to image: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GV7S_fMaoAAf3w3?format=jpg&name=...
>A lot of really terrible takes in this comment section. Telegram didn't have encrypted groups by default, and telegram possessed a lot of content on their servers that they had been made aware was illegal and didn't cooperate. Nothing more, nothing less.
When they have absolutely no idea what's going on. The number one terrible take is this very quoted comment.
Commenters and their supporters on this site love to make unequivocal statements like this as if they possessed the mind of god themselves.
But devman0 and people who upvoted their comment: you are responsible for this misinformation. Think before you shout to the heavens on a topic you know absolutely nothing about. That's on all of you.
Anyone else reading this comment thread: discuss with restraint based on the knowledge you have. Unless you are directly involved in this case, you don't have even the faintest clue of what you're talking about.
So it's still manifestly unclear why he was arrested (although I note that the press release says he wasn't arrested, merely held for questioning until Wednesday).
Nothing complicated. He got snatched because someone somewhere wants something from him and this is the "public" reason. If he's out, telegram is compromised, if he stays in we can't even assume that it isn't.
Did we read the same warrant? Those aren't all administrative charges.
* https://www.opb.org/article/2023/06/04/a-decade-on-edward-sn...
Probably not. I doubt, for example, that he could surrender himself to the West if he wanted to.
The whole encryption issue seems like a total sideshow to me. I've been on Telegram for years and only exchanged a few DMs in that time. There are tons of public channels which require no approval or exchange of information to join.
That said, it's no surprise that anyone who doesn't identify with a riot wants to suppress freedom of expression on an unrelated platform and those who agree with a movement or riot, will want to ensure freedom of expression on a given platform even if they previously and into the future might want to shutdown the same medium for allowing expression they disagree with.
- "The French government hasn’t formally specified why it singled out TikTok for a block."
- "Philippe Gomes, the former president of New Caledonia's government, told POLITICO the decision aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests" through the app."
https://www.politico.eu/article/french-tiktok-ban-new-caledo... ("French TikTok block in overseas territory sets ‘dangerous precedent,’ critics warn")
Just because it's legal does not mean they did the right thing to do.
- Durov was an author of VKontakte, I suppose you can say it's Russian Facebook, then there were some events resulting in him leaving VK, and leaving the country;
- He started Telegram, and supposedly at this point he was a dissident, but strangely, in Russia everyone and their brother were using Telegram. This includes government officials, military, etc, etc.
- The latest developments occurred after he visited Azerbaijan, where it was speculated he met Putin. Right after that, he boards his plane and goes directly to Paris, where he knew he was wanted. There are some speculations that he wanted to be arrested, because the alternative was worse. How worse? It's a speculation, obviously, but we know what Putin can do to people he disagree with.
Bottom line, there is much we don't know about this. Reducing it to "free speech" issue is simplifying it. Somebody like Snowden, who said nothing about free speech in Russia (where basically everything is censored), should refrain from commenting.
Finally, I find it's unacceptable that we have to rely on software provided by PRIVATE COMPANIES to securely communicate between individuals. This is what the Internet was supposed to be about - a set of communication standards. With the current state of cryptography, we should be able to solve this as a public standard.
How credible are these claims?
love when everything inconvenient to the United States government and it's affiliates is "disinformation"
That's not what disinformation means. Disinformation is a polite way of saying lies [1].
[1] https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/schwerpunkte/EN/disinform...
Why doesn't Snowden speak about the horrors of the Russian war in Ukraine where woman and children are raped and shot?
He only speaks when it is beneficial for his masters.
I thought and still think that Snowden is a brave and righteous man for airing the US government's dirty laundry.
Not him becoming a Russian citizen, but rather his silence on the bloody war of Putin, however, makes me think that I should take Snowden's words with a pinch of salt.
That he is not openly endorsing the current government might be as much latitude as he is allowed.
Snowden knows he is being watched closely. I suppose that is itself a reason to take what he says with a grain of salt, but I certainly don't take his silence on the Ukraine war as evidence of assent.
Telegram is also an app that is widely used by Russian troops to organize and also for dissemination of propaganda and misinformation. It's just not characteristic of Snowden to endorse apps that could potentially be honeypots/backdoored, and to equate such apps as important to free speech.
This tweet is literally plain propaganda move, as it has little to do with human rights... and Snowden has been a treasure trove of Russian sponsored propaganda lately.
To the point of me thinking that his Twitter is just some FSB agent writing posts for him.
Why not? What's the thinking here?
> Probably not, Snowden is part of the Russian Spy and Disinformation campaign. He is basically a Russian agent.
Any evidence for that?
at this point he is at the mercy of his FSB handler, either he posts what he is told/expected to or he loses usefulness and joins Russell 'Texas' Bentley as a cautionary tale.
No. But it's reasonable to presume he's a compromised source. That doesn't mean he wants to be, nor that everything he's saying has been dictated to him. But his public communications would be, at the very least, monitored and vetted.
This is another way of trying to inflate an incident, to create "an elephant out of a fly"(as they say in Russia)
This has little to no relevance on freedom of speech
Edward Snowden is a hero who has made a tremendous sacrifice for Americans and for American ideals. The fact that he has to live in Russia to enjoy peace and freedom is a damning indictment, to be sure, but not of Edward Snowden.
I don't know how a trial would have ended, but considering how much public attention he got, including many supporters, he would have had a fair trial, or at least, fair enough for the cameras. Chances are that by now, he would have served his time in prison (he broke the law after all) and be a free US citizen. After all, Assange and Manning are both free right now.
Yes, years in prison is not fun, at all (hence the "sacrifice" part), but I guess his stay in Russia is not particularly fun either. And now, he risks an even greater sentence should he go back to the US.
His actions, though undeniably human, taint his status as a hero.
Moving 10K miles away from you family and friends, never to return home isn't a tremendous sacrifice? Living the rest of your life in fear of being snatched up or murdered by the CIA isn't a tremendous sacrifice? Okay, dude.
> It would have been had he decided to face trial
It's only a sacrifice if you submit corrupt justice? Yikes.
> or at least not flee to a country that is the historical enemy of the US...
This is the best option to avoid extradition, as you well know.
> ...with access to who knows how many copies of secret documents so that he could save his ass.
What a damning hypothetical!
> I don't know how a trial would have ended, but considering how much public attention he got, including many supporters, he would have had a fair trial, or at least, fair enough for the cameras.
This is weaselspeak for "we all know he wouldn't have gotten a fair trial."
> Chances are that by now, he would have served his time in prison
A decade in prison. For doing his duty.
> His actions, though undeniably human, taint his status as a hero.
Yours is the morality of a Vichy collaborator. True heroes submit to injustice? Bullshit! True heroes fight injustice and thumb their noses at corrupt centers of power.
There's speculation (but no proof) that Russia already has access to the cryptographic keys for Telegram. They were very intent on getting access or banning the service some years ago, and then rather suddenly stopped talking about it.
- selling drugs
- selling hacking/ddossing services
- posting beheading videos, latest one had Ukrainian soldiers head on a spike
- sending cruise missile targeting coordinates to military units
According to outraged russians those all among the things French prosecutors mentioned in arrest warrant.
We literally had to pass a law because people kept doing that [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_...
The U.S. government doesn't like encrypted communications. But it's legally bound, by our Constitution and courts, in a way Paris is not.
Nobody has been fussing about Telegram in a serious way in America.
Edit: I added on a mention about the close intelligence relationship between France and USA, for those not in the know.
Not really, no. If we wanted to nab him for goodies, we'd use a country without the rule of law.
> with France being part of the 9-Eyes alliance with USA
Telegram is unencrypted by default. The IC has no reason to mess with it.
Also, it takes about a picosecond of studying Gallic-American relations to realise that Paris doesn't take instructions from Washington.
My understanding, unlike US companies, Telegram hasn't been co-operating with the EU? US companies are not perfect (see the hundreds of millions/billions of fines), but the US companies at least work with authorities.
non-cooperation with information from law enforcement of a foreign government is the same as the discourse about us-based tech not complying to chinese requests or those from US adversaries. that alone does not fly in the court of law, at least for rich and influential people.
the only thing to wonder is if there was an existing warrant issued against him in place much before he landed in france, and if so why he decided to travel there.
USA: "We have no problem with someone saying that the president is an idiot"
Russia: "We have no problem with someone saying that the US president is an idiot"
New Zeland is likely up there too, likely Luxembourg/Switzerland and other tax havens. The Baltics are pretty good.
> On 5 February 2016, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights announced that the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had found that the UK and Swedish governments were holding Assange in arbitrary detention by initially keeping him in isolation at Wandsworth prison and because the Swedish prosecutor was conducting its investigation with a "lack of diligence". The Working Group said Assange should be allowed to walk free and be given compensation.[113][114][115] The UK and Swedish governments denied the charge of detaining Assange arbitrarily.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...
I'm not understanding the logic there. CSAM not being taken down after a request from law enforcement is an awful thing.
I've also read that you get bombarded by drugs and sex trafficking if you search locally, which is seriously yuck if it's true. Does that really happen?
With all that said, this appears to be the correct take based on what information we have today.
And this says all you need to know about his (lack of) character. If he had the courage of his convictions, he'd return and face the music.
He probably can't.
I remember Putin's rise to power - I was 13 at the time. Now I'm 37 and basically a refugee (made a few stupid decisions, now who knows what happen if I decide to go see my parents). Putin's Russia turned into a brutally authoritarian country around 2011 when there were widespread protests condemning heavily falsified municipal elections.
In 2012, we were almost certain that Putin's days are over... in 2018 I remember myself standing in scalding Moscow sun at the Sakharov square at a protest against Telegram being blocked, wearing a Tor T-shirt and handing over flyers and materials telling people how to evade government blocks on the net.
Now, I just don't care. I feel deeply betrayed by my own country and sometimes I wish Russia was nuked out of existence. And yet, this is the country where my parents live, and many of my friends who couldn't leave.
This all is hell on Earth for me -- I have many Ukrainian and Russian friends -- we try to help each other, but currently I'm losing all hope at at least somewhat sane resolution of it all. My friends are equally desperate - many turned refugees and asylum seekers, many without work or language knowledge in foreign countries...
Sometimes I just wish life on Earth never existed at all.
Many hugs and a lot of strength! It sounds like you're one of the real Russian heroes, even if it doesn't feel like that at all.
This is real life we're talking about here, not a Hollywood thriller. The only thing that might ensue after he got arrested on return would be the mother of all interagency pissing contests. Which are not anything new to the Federal government; they happen all the time.
And someone has to charge Snowden and lobbies for stricter legal penalties.
But more to the point; I find it kind of hilarious how the crypto bros* are UP IN ARMS over this; like weren't y'all supposed to make a blockchain version of this or something? Did y'all forget the whole "decentralization" bit?
*I do the crypto thing a bit myself, but yes, I do mean to talk about a certain type.
The only reason Edward Snowden got asylum in Russia is using him for propaganda.
The goal of the USA trapping him there was to get people to disregard his opinions like this. Yes, he can't say the truth regarding the Russia. But he can still say the truth regarding France.
And this is the truth. If this were done by another less powerful country there would be (and has been) outrage.
He became an essential part of their propaganda, he doesn't even have to do it in person, his X account is enough.
Either you've been hugely mislead by anti Snowden people, or you are willfully ignorant, or worse.
Snowden says gave everything he had to the journalists he met with in HK, and destroyed all copies in his possession before attempting to transit through Moscow.
If your belief is that he did otherwise -- you'll have to explain how you "know" this to be the case.
BTW I never said that I believed he was telling the truth.
But that's very different from pretending to simply "know" that he wasn't.
You should read what Daniel Ellsberg had to say about Snowden's decision to flee the country. Things have changed dramatically since Vietnam:
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/30/daniel...>
> He didn't have to escape to Russia...
The intent was never to stay in Russia. Snowden's passport was revoked by the US State Department while he was in transit from Hong Kong to -IIRC- Ecuador. His trip had him stop in Russia, which would not let him leave because his passport was no longer valid.
<https://apnews.com/article/82f87def2ddc4abfba271420f4e81ddf>
He did, and took a path that allowed him not to be disappeared, suddenly become suicidal or fatally ill with weird symptoms.
I must have missed the pro-Ukrainian protests, lawmakers and debates--online and all over the news--in Russia.
Because I can assure you that coverage of pro-Ukrainian protests as unpatriotic happens in Russia too.
Yes, people disagree. Vehemently. And in public. That's sort of the entire difference.
> I can assure you that coverage of pro-Ukrainian protests as unpatriotic happens in Russia too
Where these protesters are congregating that isn't inside a prison?
Do you think when people as powerful as the U.S. President and all the cable networks smear protesters, do you think the protesters have an equal platform/power to dispute this and therefore it's a debate?
My point is not to argue that Russia isn't authoritarian but that every country seeks to delegitimize those who disagree with its powerful. That does not mean that there aren't a lot of people who may disagree incl for example Snowden.
Yes. I'm in New York. Israel/Palestine is enthusiastically debated in public spaces.
And Presidents smear people and causes all the time. The fact that they're complaining about them and not ordering arrests is the salient difference. For a foreign policy issue, the war in Gaza has received a lot of attention, especially considering it's an election year.
> my point is not to argue that Russia isn't authoritarian but that every country seeks to legitimize those who disagree with its powerful
This is the essence of power. The point is how probable it is that the power succeeds. There is no free speech in Russia. Falsely conflating Snowden's situation with that of the Gaza protesters doesn't hold.
This is why there can be a 'debate'.
But as soon as any such debate threatens to actually change something, cops are deployed to beat people up, protesters are arrested and harassed and of course they are constantly smeared in the media.
That is the real difference as far as I can see it.
Don't get me wrong, I am part of the Western world and I'd like it to be true what you say, but why do things like this[1] happen then?
1 - https://www.newstatesman.com/diary/2024/04/cancelled-germany...
I'm fairly sure the regime in the UK has lasted longer, technically. You could say that the laws that enabled the current system came into place in 1707 with the Acts of Union, although the modern interpretation took time to come into effect. You could also argue that the supremacy of parliament and thus the beginning of the current regime started in 1688.
The problem with continuous is that things do change over time, and the American system has also evolved since it was conceived.
Whatever "changes" happen within the US (or the UK) system do not fundamentally uproot the civil servants or the permanent bureaucracy in the West, thus the insinuations remain stable.
Certainly more so than anywhere else in the world. Any changes are minuscule in the grand scheme of things.
[1] - https://apnews.com/article/college-protest-israel-hamas-war-...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Russian_i...
True, but by local authorities. And in most cases charges were dropped. The total number detained is small, and in most cases I've personally seen, at least in New York, credibly tied to a destructive act that had nothing to do with the protest.
> probably because of having a comically twisted view of how authoritarianism plays out in practice
Absolutely agree. To a sad degree, the current seat of authoritarian politics in America has shifted to Silicon Valley.
> you believing there were no large demonstrations within Russia as being an example of this perspective
I should have clarified without reprisals, but you are correct--the St. Petersburg protests weren't well covered by the international press.
Just because some activists is in a western country doesn't mean they're free from influence or intimidation.
And just to be clear, the bans we have in Germany prohibit spreading lies about some of the worst atrocities ever committed by man. Freedom of speech is a valuable right, but not as valuable as the dignity and life of humans, 50m of which lost their life from 1933-1945.
https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-new-citizenship-rule-pledge-t...
But how about the US Oath of Allegiance, would you consider it a restriction of "Free Speech" that you have to renounce all allegiance to any foreign sovereignty? Is it a restriction of free speech that you have to say something if you want to become a citizen?
"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God."
State is just some temporary (in the grand scheme of things) form of often violent organization some group of people form at a time to organize their affairs (and force some others into or out of, usually) for their own benefit. (For Israel, this includes defacto permanent military subjugation of millions of people, and stripping them of their rights. This makes it doubly ridiculous that this is almost the only state where you constantly hear from the supporters that it has the "right to exists" somehow.)
States either do exist (if enough people are willing to fund and maintain such an organization, and/or let themselves get killed and/or kill others for it) or they don't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_exist
It's just a philosophical issue. That Germany decided preserving existence of particular current form of Israeli state is useful target for thought policing is basically just ridiculous.
Calls for "destruction" of Israel as a state as it currently is (eg. change of regime from racist religious ethnostate to true democracy) are not necessarily "bad". The state I was born in doesn't exist anymore, BTW. It was replaced with a different state because people called for ending it in '89. And then again at the end of '92. Not many people are crying over it. States come and go all the time.
And it's perfectly possible to question this claim (it is not ipso facto a "right") without being even in the least antisemitic, or wishing physical harm on anyone. Being as you're leaving out the fact that this "sovereign nation" was carved out of another people's land, fundamentally denying their right to self-determination.
It is this usurpation and denial of the rights of the indigenous inhabitants that people question, when they express doubts about the supposedly inalienable "right" of the State of Israel to exist.
(And yes - this generalizes to all countries; it's perfectly reasonable to question the "right" of any country to exist, or to exist with its currently claimed borders).
As you seem to agree that most modern nations have been borne out of injustices of some form or other, I feel obliged to ask this: isn't it taxing to deny every country's right to exist? It feels like it would be if you want to live in a moderate society where people want bygones to be bygones, especially the kinds that nobody can do anything meaningful about.
Personally I feel like the more productive way of arguing is for diminishing the injustices that are happening right now, not against the reasons why those injustices happen in the first place.
I don't see this stance so much as denying the rights of these countries to exist.
But rather, as recognizing that all of them are, for the most part -- faits accomplis. And in particular -- that we are free to disregard obligations imposed by others to pretend (with them) that they have (and at this point I am no longer using your words, but generalizing) some inalienable, "God-given" right to occupy a given piece of territory, within whatever borders they choose to proclaim -- and at the expense of the rights of those already living there.
So on balance, I see this is a decidedly less taxing stance to take.
At the same time -- I'm very much in the "bygones be bygones" camp, as applies to the vast majority of cases. Which doesn't mean, however, that aren't certain major territorial disputes around the world that aren't yet quite ready for the "bygones" designation -- and in fact still need to be properly adjudicated (or barring that, at least protected from deteriorating / being encroached upon even further).
The situation in the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights being one of them.
In fact, I think those moral obligations rank higher than a lot of individual freedoms. Remember that the German constitution puts the dignity of (wo)man above all other rights.
Freedom of Opinion is Article 5 and can be restricted by law and to protect youth and personal honor.
I don't know where you come from but calls for destruction of any country are bad. We might strive for leaders or parties to be exchanged, we might strive for independence of oppressed minorities, but that doesn't mean we want to destroy the country.
You can't weigh evil against other evil. You got to find another way.
To get to the point of my previous comment. Do you expect that demanding anti-zionists to publicly say Israel deserves to be a state will have any impact on their belief? The DW article acknowledges that a very strong anti zionist (or rather plain anti jewish) sentiment exists already in the locals. What good does it do to force people to say this one specific thing?
Free Speech just means that you aren't oppressed to say certain things. Like all rights, also the Freedom of Speech has its boundaries. Slander for example. Germany applies certain sensible restrictions on speech and that's it. That's not negative. Free speech absolutists just like to have no strings attached, but this isn't what holds societies together.
Forgive me for dramatizing, but I fail to see how being rejected for citizenship as a refugee coming from the Palestinian territories because you can't bring yourself to say your life long enemy is implied to have the right to oppress you and your family is anything but pertaining to Free Speech.
When governments demand people (any people) say things (any things) for a purpose (any purpose), that is an infringement of their freedom of speech. I can understand you disagree with that, but for me it's very obvious.
Governments obviously can (must!) ask you to answer (truthfully) in many situations. Just think of taxation. This isn't infringement of freedom of speech.
b.) As a Palestinian you aren't forced by Germans to say Israel can oppress you. You are asked to agree that Israelis have a right to life too (as any human actually has).
Here's a list of the actual questions, from a recent article in Die Welt:
1. Vor wie vielen Jahren gab es erstmals eine jüdische Gemeinde auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Deutschlands?
a) vor etwa 300 Jahren
b) vor etwa 700 Jahren
c) vor etwa 1150 Jahren
d) vor etwa 1700 Jahren*
2. Wer darf bei den rund 40 jüdischen Makkabi-Sportvereinen Mitglied werden?
a) nur Deutsche
b) nur Israelis
c) nur religiöse Menschen
d) alle Menschen\*
3. Welche Städte haben die größten jüdischen Gemeinden in Deutschland?
a) Berlin und München\*
b) Hamburg und Essen
c) Nürnberg und Stuttgart
d) Worms und Speyer
4. Wie heißt das jüdische Gebetshaus?
a) Basilika
b) Moschee
c) Synagoge\*
d) Kirche
5. Auf welcher rechtlichen Grundlage wurde der Staat Israel gegründet?
a) eine Resolution der Vereinten Nationen\*
b) ein Beschluss des Zionistenkongresses
c) ein Vorschlag der Bundesregierung
d) ein Vorschlag der UdSSR
6. Woraus begründet sich Deutschlands besondere Verantwortung für Israel?
a) aus der Mitgliedschaft in der Europäischen Union (EU)
b) aus den nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen\*
c) aus dem Grundgesetz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
d) aus der christlichen Tradition
7. Was ist ein Beispiel für antisemitisches Verhalten?
a) ein jüdisches Fest besuchen
b) die israelische Regierung kritisieren
c) den Holocaust leugnen\*
d) gegen Juden Fußball spielen
8. Woran erinnern die sogenannten Stolpersteine in Deutschland?
a) an berühmte deutsche Politikerinnen und Politiker
b) an die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus\*
c) an Verkehrstote
d) an bekannte jüdische Musiker
9. Wie kann jemand, der den Holocaust leugnet, bestraft werden?
a) Kürzung sozialer Leistungen
b) bis zu 100 Sozialstunden
c) gar nicht, Holocaustleugnung ist erlaubt
d) mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu fünf Jahren oder mit Geldstrafe\*
10. Welche Handlung mit Bezug auf den Staat Israel ist in Deutschland verboten?
a) die Politik Israels öffentlich kritisieren
b) das Aufhängen einer israelischen Flagge auf dem Privatgrundstück
c) eine Diskussion über die Politik Israels
d) der öffentliche Aufruf zur Vernichtung Israels\*
I would like to propose a test for how free countries are: take a cart-board and write something critical about the current government, hold it up on a major square in the capital. Count the seconds/minutes/hours until they arrest you.
Now compare results across countries.
They can do stuff like that for days/months/years without getting arrested.
1 - https://www.newstatesman.com/diary/2024/04/cancelled-germany...
Because:
"police banned the final two days of the event, citing concern about the potential for hate speech"
The potential? Sounds very Putin-esque if you ask me.
1 - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/police-shut-down-pro-pa...
> "A detailed questionnaire was designed by the research team, working with law and policy experts on the right of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression. The resulting 143 questions which formed the basis for the research were rooted in the international legal obligations that states have to respect, protect and fulfil the relevant human rights under international treaties to which they are party."
And form nuanced conclusion based on wide array of facts. :)
Yeah, good propaganda - if you're an anti-WEF-globalist - F WEF and F the surveillance state
Feb 11, 2022: "There is nothing more grotesque than a media pushing for war."
Feb 15th: "So... if nobody shows up for the invasion Biden scheduled for tomorrow morning at 3AM, I'm not saying your journalistic credibility was instrumentalized as part of one of those disinformation campaigns you like to write about, but you should at least consider the possibility."
"If there's an invasion tomorrow, dunk on me because I have been spectacularly wrong."
US / EU intel: 1
Snowden / Russia: 0